Alden Jones
@aldenejones
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Author of The Wanting Was a Wilderness + other books. Asst Prof @EmersonCollege . Coming soon: Edge of the World, an LGBTQ+ travel anthology🏳️🌈🧳
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Joined October 2012
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Yes, college students have lost their ability to read. I have taught lit for 24 years; the threshold started to decline in the late aughts and nosedived during Covid. A thread with observations + how I get my students to read ALL (or at least most) of the reading I assign: 🧵
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Being mad at students for not being more into reading helps no one. They have been trained by their devices to seek quick pleasure hits, not the slow pleasures of reading. I am a writer who grew up in the analog age, and I can't give a book the same attention I once did. 🥺
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For creative writing classes that require shorter readings, I stand at the Xerox machine and copy every. single. thing we will read & distribute a packet at the beginning of the semester. They appreciate this very much. They never have to chase down an assignment and it's free.
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I emphasize writing in texts. I teach/review how to annotate a text. Pens or pencils are also required. We start every text by reading aloud in class. The seal is broken, the book is easier to get back into next time. We discuss what the book is telling us about how to enter it.
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For lit classes, I require PAPER TEXTS. I email students ahead of the semester and explain this so they are not horrified on day 1. They can opt out and use e-texts if they come to me with a reason (disability etc)--but they have to provide a reason. (I never say no)
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The suggestion that we should have lower expectations of the reading abilities of college students who are POC, poor, caregivers, etc. actually sounds pretty racist to me.
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Every time reading is due I give a reading check. 5-10 questions, no analysis - just to make sure they've read to the end. They swap quizzes with a classmate and we go over the quiz and they grade each other. Conscientious students love the easy A. Slackers can't hide.
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On a final note, if you are an academic who thinks written texts are racist, and therefore expecting students to read them is in the spirit of white supremacy, you are part of the problem.
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Colleges made it so much worse during Covid by lifting the consequences of not showing up/not doing the work. My institution has yet to bring back attendance policies and students are used to calling the shots now. Once students asked me for permission to miss a class;
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For some reason some educators expect students will lose it if you ask them to read on paper. This is not true. My students thank me every semester. They know they've lost something in the digital age. They WANT reading to be easier, more pleasurable.
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now they tell me they are going to miss a class, or even an exam, and then sign their emails "Thanks for understanding." This is where we are now.
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I also give exams - with blue books! I provide them. (remember when students had to buy their own?!) Students need WAY more help preparing for exams than they used to, and they crave very exact "rubrics," so we do a whole practice exam the week before, slowly and together.
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@Krusty_M_D
It is absolutely and utterly depressing. But we did this to young people by giving them devices and integrating them into their educations. Personally I'd like to see a full cell phone ban in k-12 schools.
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When I first taught my Literature of Photography class in 2009 I taught 9 books. One of them was Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. They read this monster. No pushback. It is unfathomable to imagine teaching a book like that in a 100-level class today.
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In that class I also taught Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. It is a weird but gratifying book that teaches so much about the early days of photography, and it's thematically pertinent to so many things this gen cares about. But they can't do it anymore.
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So I pick my texts with the objective of challenging them where they are. I still assign Barthes and Sontag, and they enjoy them - but they are short texts. I have reduced the # of pages, but still teach an array of texts, more stories/essays/poems, fewer novels/long books.
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If you have school-aged children and think paper texts are important or that cell phone and other devices should be kept out of classrooms, I urge you to send a quick email to let the school know.
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Wow this is wild! I wish I had something to hawk right now haha. But really, the response to this crisis in learning is heartening, and it is very meaningful to me that the one and only viral tweet of my Twitter life is on the subject of teaching methods. I love what I do.
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I do want to clarify that I was speaking mainly about undergrads in a 100/200-level lit class who are not necessarily lit majors. I also teach upper level undergrads and MFA students, and while the specifics of their reading histories are all over, they read/love reading A LOT.
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@EmmanuelGo59069
Yes, this. The physical contact with the object is part of how readers remember and consider what they've read. The first chapter FEELS different from the last.
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@ILuvGritty
My creative writing students beg me to teach them the rules of grammar. I also only know them from having studied Spanish.
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This is a book I wrote which articulates the methods I use to teach creative NF, as well as being a close reading of Cheryl Strayed's WILD, if of interest. Ironically my publisher recently folded and I'm not sure if you can still get it in print!
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@mysteriousmaple
It is a really fun class. Sarah Sentilles' Draw Your Weapons (a student fave), Cortázar's "Blow-up," Teju Cole, Italo Calvino's "Adventures of a Photographer," Annie Proulx's "Negatives," Barthes, Berger, Sontag
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I look 48 because I am 48! Age shame is internalized misogyny! Don’t fall for it!
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Someone let me know print copies still available here! I am not sure what is happening with
@FictionAdvocate
but if paper copies are still available this is the best and least expensive place to buy them.
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@ClinicalLiz
It's varied but I now have a 2/3 with a lot of thesis advising. Creative writing classes are capped at 12 and lit at 25.
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@LaGrecca333
@MinnRngr
How have decriminalization (of what, exactly, in Boston?), an “open border,” and the public services you mention affected your life in Boston? Asking as a Bostonian who sees your vagueness as a deliberate strategy to mislead.
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@thrasherxy
My students routinely refer to novels as novels, memoirs as memoirs, and essays as essays. Because they have been taught to use the correct terms. Just a thought.
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@samgreeenberg
Took my friend visiting from NYC on the Green Line and when she saw the 2-car train chugging in she doubled over and just laughed and laughed.
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@crackdaya
They are pressure campaigns. They target those they deem easiest to pressure into compliance. Then they use that to pressure the next easiest. Meantime, if you don't comply, they try to discredit you to "send a message" to others. All outlined in recorded talks at the Peoples
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2 students I had years ago from 2 different classes met while they were on the elevator on the way to my office hours and they just announced their engagement, I feel like this deserves a teaching award
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My 6-year-old was jealous of her sister's birthday presents so she took my guitar and shut herself into her room to literally write songs about how sad she was like a baby folk singer
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My son (5th grade) and his friends have started a school club called GLOW: Gay, Lesbian, Or Whatever
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Safe to say I’ve never been this excited about a literary event in my life. I’ll be in conversation with
@CherylStrayed
about memoir on Wednesday, September 9 at 7:30pm via the Center for Fiction (online). Link to register in comments!
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I encourage my MFA students to review small press books & pitch to places like
@The_Rumpus
,
@brevitymag
,
@tupelopress
. It is good lit citizenship as well as a win-win for new writers seeking pubs and indie authors. What other mags take reviews or pitches for small press books?
I really wish media and litmags were more open to reviewing books that have been out for more than 5 minutes, and books by small indie presses. Buzzy authors published by big presses (with marketing $$$) get a disproportionate amount of attention and the rest of us get crumbs
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@thesimsimmi
Access, yes, I always assign a specific edition that is easily purchased used to keep costs down. But I also tell my students to let me know privately if cost is an issue so I can work with them on it (use my faculty funds if needed), and keep texts on reserve at the library.
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I just signed off an email with "Warmly" and now I want to die
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I don't know what other teachers are in it for but I'm in it for feedback like this...
"Since taking this class, I have made a plan of action to be a radical feminist and to practice radical self love."
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I am incredibly thrilled to have won a Whiting Foundation Fellowship for travel to Vietnam and Cambodia. In '22 I'll go to research regional photography on the 50th anniversary of Nick Ut's "The Terror of War." Thank you
@WhitingFdn
and
@Emerson_ORCS
for this amazing support!
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Being a libtard college professor in a super conservative family means that when the 18-22 year olds arrive at Thanksgiving you think "Phew, people I can be myself with"
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“Susan Sontag said, ‘literature is a party,’ Welcome to my party.” —Alexander Chee on Best American Essays 2022, first look at
@EmersonCollege
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So honored that The Wanting Was a Wilderness is on the list of Lambda Award finalists in the company of these amazing books! Thank you
@LambdaLiterary
!
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11-year-old: “I don’t think I’m going to get married when I grow up. It’s just gonna be me, my dog and my therapist”
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@LaGrecca333
@zechipaul
@MinnRngr
So you live in Roxbury? I live next door in Rosi. What you are describing has affected my life not at all. How has it affected yours? What shelters? Why are they "vital"? To whom? YOU?
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108 students arrested at Emerson College last night. My god. I had just walked through the alley at 9pm worried for my students because it was so cold.
#emersoncollege
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The recess monitor informed me that my 7-year-old has been "running around the playground talking about the patriarchy and how she is going to smash it" 😳
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Tweeting actively since 2020, still lucky to get 3 likes on a tweet in 2021
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One of the proudest moments in my Republican father's life was when I landed a tenure-track professorship. He championed every step of my education. Same man to our aspiring-writer waiter who said he didn't want to teach: "Oh, you don't want to be a brainwasher? Good for you!"
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@lllliatttt
@mcmansionhell
Uhh my doctor prescribes it to me because it works for me. Antidepressants contain multitudes
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I just went through and cleared 700+ emails from the institution where I teach and my inbox is at 0 for the first time *ever*, PLEASE CLAP
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Separated in 2016, divorced in 2018, taking our kids on the best family vacation ever in 2021. Let’s make more models for happy families 💫
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Coming spring 2025: EDGE OF THE WORLD: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜✈️
Thrilled to close out the year w/
@aldenejones
' necessary anthology! So many fab writers here:
@alexanderchee
@daisyhernandez
@putsata
@gayrodcon
@RalucaTweets
@NicoleShawan
@ZoeSprankle
, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Genevieve Hudson, Edmund White & more! Coming from
@BlairPublisher
!
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Get ready everyone, my
#IN200Feminisms
class will be LIVE TWEETING feminist films and readings as our class moves online!
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My first-year undergrads were so unprecedentedly stressed out I just led them in a 30-minute yoga session
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Book swap on the last day of class with these brilliant and talented nonfiction writers at
@Emerson_WLP
. Spot the wild card!
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Currently in the hospital recovering from minor surgery (went great). I have no one to take care of, but 2 nurses frequently stop by to see if I need more coffee or water or pain meds and if I say yes they bring it to me. Nurse Mary: “Think you’re ready to go home?” Me: “NOPE.”
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Will starting a new book help me climb out of my existential despair?
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No Stephen King you did not just open a book review in the NYT with a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary omfg [English teachers everywhere throw up their hands]
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Read a bunch of autofiction this summer and now have a list of writers I definitely don’t want to be friends with
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Every woman who has tried unsuccessfully to have a biological child now regards JD Vance with a particular burning hatred that shall consume the Republican ticket in its fiery blaze
Jennifer Aniston took to her Instagram Story to slam J.D. Vance for his remarks about childless cat ladies and In Vitro Fertilization.
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Writing teachers, I am looking for exercises that break writers (MFA level) of their habitual sentence and paragraph structures. One I like is "write a story/essay in 26 sentences, each one starting with each letter of the alphabet, in order." What else you got?
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Not for a month yet, but I am SO looking forward to conversing with
@svenbirkerts
, one of my literary heroes, about our books about books! Jan 7 via Porter Square Books.
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I spoke with
@brevitymag
about writing The Wanting Was a Wilderness and how
@CherylStrayed
’s nonfiction “reveals that honesty and self-awareness—rather than immaculate behavior—determine a memoir persona’s so-called likeability.”
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Mem Day wknd in Ptown used to mean fitting as many lesbians into my house as possible and, since my birthday falls soon after, a cake decorated by drunk people
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@mckenziewark
Do you know about her beef with Edmund White. She blurbed Boys Own Story then demanded her blurb be removed from all 34 editions of the book after Ed wrote about her and her son in a way she did NOT like. She died mad about it. He still talks about it
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English professors, tag yourselves
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Remembering the year I taught my 1st creative writing workshop at NYU as a grad student, & how our last day of class was a party at my apt during which we drank like 4 cases of beer, smoked 400 cigarettes, and shared our writing for hours, oh I miss the 20th century sometimes
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1,069 words and goddammit I think my essay about gender and beauty and aging just turned into something like a book about happiness and writing 😳
#1000wordsofsummer
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Coming up on the 10th anniversary of THE BLIND MASSEUSE! I gave my first radio interview for this book from the maternity ward 48 hours after giving birth to my daughter. The craziest year of my life - the year that changed everything. Thank you to every single reader. ♥️
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Do all GenXers suck at what the youths call "self-care"? As I came up I saw 2 options: suck it up & carry on or be a big whiny baby.
Just wondering why it didn't occur to me, even as a passing thought, that I should not teach for 3 hours the day after abdominal surgery?
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I JUST found out that the heartbreaker Maggie Nelson wrote about in The Red Parts and Bluets is Nick Flynn and I could NOT sleep last night and I cannot believe that NONE of you told me this
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The Wanting Was a Wilderness:
@CherylStrayed
's Wild and the Art of Memoir, is out May 12 & available for preorder at
@FictionAdvocate
! Find out what I learned about memoir craft by dismantling Wild and building my own memoir of my 85 days in the wild.
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I'm at the end of my rope with my
#adjunct
role. Every summer I talk myself into being grateful for the freedom & every fall I am back to being stunned by the treatment of adjuncts. A TT job is a lottery I don't expect to win. Send advice & life coach contacts.
#AcademicChatter
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When you're out getting a coffee and you see your name on the cover of the local
#Provincetown
magazine 😭
@provincetownMag
@fictionadvocate
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bell hooks changed the conversation entirely. It's impossible to calculate how much she gave us. Taken way too soon 💔
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Woke up with the words floating into sentences and clicking into paragraphs, as they have been lately, and this time decided to actually get up and write instead of thinking about writing. 1,510 words in one sitting, good lord that felt good.
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